User talk:AmusingCalico
EmpyrealInvective (talk) 20:41, June 11, 2017 (UTC) Re: Story There were quite a lot of issues here, a number of which are addressed in the quality standards outlined in the links above. Starting with at the bare essentials, your story is a massive paragraph with over seventy sentences composing the first paragraph and the second being closer to a literary paragraph. A typical paragraph is five-ten sentences long. Any longer and the text becomes blocky and difficult to read. Any less and the story feels anemic and lacking focus. Punctuation: You forget to punctuate a lot of your contractions here. "The man in the dark hoodie and faded jeans, that(')s who", "It is almost as if you do not have a choice, but you can(')t be sure", "But you can(')t, your legs aren't listening to you.", "You don(')t recall slowing down but sure enough you are walking, the man is matching your pace not even five feet ahead of you.", etc. You need to be uniform in your use of apostrophes as well as realize that if you're going to stylistically leave out apostrophes (ala Cormac McCarthy) in contractions that they need to serve a purpose in the story as without them, it's grammatically incorrect. Punctuation issues cont.: A lot of your dialogue is missing quotations and proper punctuation. "(")MOM!!!(") You (you) shout desperately, trying to wake her.", "the long bony fingers come to its smiling face and he breathes out an asphyxiated (")shhhhhhhhhhhhhh,(") then speaks in a gurgly voice.(,/:) "You'll wake her."", ""Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh(comma missing)" You (you) hear yourself say as the knife descends into your chest."", etc. Wording issues: A number of sentences are incomplete/broken due to improper punctuation usage. "chasing? The man in the dark hoodie and faded jeans, thats who. But again, why are you chasing him?", "You think. But the words do not leave your lips.", "slimy worms crawl over your skin. But you arent bothered.", etc. Remember, typically if you're using a conjunction that it is a continuation of the earlier sentence. Ending it with conclusive punctuation makes the story flow feel very choppy and awkward. Repetition issues: Lines like this feel very repetitive and don't really enhance the story much. "Then the figure begins to turn its head. Not its body, just its head. Slowly it turns, there is a soft creaking. Further and further it turns until it stops" It feels like you could have combined a number of those sentences to be more effectively descriptively and to also remove the redundancy. This selection for example repeats the word 'turn' three times in four sentences and it's a bit noticeable. Additionally you tend to vary between using words in a grammatically correct manner and using them incorrectly. "Its a terrifying sound". (it's=it is, its=possession) Story issues.: You tend to switch multiple times between the antagonist being masculine and neutral. "the long bony fingers come to its (gender neutral) smiling face and he (masculine) breathes out an asphyxiated shhhhhhhhhhhhhh, then speaks in a gurgly voice. "You'll wake her."" You really should stick to one or the other for the sake of painting a cohesive picture. It also feels a bit off to describe the entity "You look on in horror as the man grins at you, his bloodshot eyes wide with psychotic fury. The grin is so inhumanly wide that it looks as if his face might tear." only to tell the audience that it looks like them later on in the story. Story issues cont.: The second person perspective here really doesn't improve the story much. Given lines of personalization like: "The sleeping figure comes into view, it's your mother!" it really feels shoe-horned in to the story. Especially with the twist of: "The thing.... it was you!", this really doesn't work as you infer multiple times what the gender of the entity is. It feels a bit forced considering that the protagonist is murdered at the end of the story and it feels like it would work much better as a third or first person narrative. This is a story that really doesn't feel too effective from a second-person perspective. Conclusion: The Werewolf in London-style ending also feels pretty forced for the sake of a spooky ending. ("You open your mouth to let out a sigh of relief but a hand slaps over it. As you look up in the dim light you see.... the grin! That fucking grin from your dream. "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" You hear yourself say as the knife descends into your chest.") Why exactly is the protagonist having this dream and how does this dream really have any bearing on their mother or why they're chasing the man/thing? This story needs quite a lot of re-working as there are quite a lot of mechanical and story issues here. EmpyrealInvective (talk) 00:30, June 12, 2017 (UTC)